A Whole-house Experience

Developers Are Offering More Areas For Eating

April 23, 2003|By SHARON STANGENES Special to the Daily Press

CHICAGO — Like the proliferation of cupholders in cars and fast-food outlets on highways, more opportunities for snacking and casual dining are being built into today's new homes. Builders say it's just a reflection of modern lifestyles, but obesity experts call the trend downright dangerous to Americans' health.

A minimum of two eating areas -- a casual dining space and breakfast bar in the kitchen and a separate room or space for formal dining -- are "must haves" in surveys of new home buyers. But many developers and builders are offering far more.

A model for Concord at the Glen in Glenview, Ill., for example, had a food preparation island in the kitchen that can be used as a breakfast bar and a casual dining area for lunch. A butler's pantry might be used to prepare cocktails and hors d'oeuvres for serving in the living room before dinner in the formal dining room. There is a minibar in the master suite sitting room for a midnight or early morning snack. And eating in the family room is as common as watching television.

As if that's not enough to bust your buttons, some homebuyers convert a second-floor bonus room into a second family room with a mini-refrigerator. The builder said basements can include a wet bar, depending upon the community, while patios, decks or walkout basements add outdoor dining options.

"Eating is so diverse, and we have so many different types of families today that we offer many eating opportunities," said Roger Mankedick, executive vice president of Palatine, Ill.-based Concord Homes.

This emphasis on eating convenience in all parts of the house disturbs those fighting the nation's growing girth.

"This is a move in the wrong direction," said Dr. Robert Kushner, medical director of Northwestern Memorial Wellness Center in Chicago.

To Kushner, the idea of a minibar in a second-floor family room to save someone from walking downstairs to the kitchen is appalling.

While not every new homebuyer opts for the bedroom breakfast bar, architect Salvatore Balsamo said snack stations are everywhere.

"We are seeing a lot of minikiosks in a home ... more equipped bars in the family room and in the master suite," said Balsamo, of Balsamo, Olson & Lewis, Ltd., Oakbrook Terrace, Ill.

The trend has been boosted by the miniaturization of appliances, which can now be hidden in niches or furniture anywhere in the house, Balsamo said.

The housing industry is no stranger to using the sensory and emotional associations of food in its marketing. Sales agents, for example, often place fresh-baked cookies or another enticing food in a house before showing it to prospective buyers. So it is hardly surprising that builders have taken that tactic a step further. Not that every builder spotted the trend early. Formal dining rooms, which are increasingly popular, were written off as dated by many a few years ago. No longer.

While 30 percent of all the new single-family homes built in 2001 did not have a living room, 57 percent had a formal dining room or a space for formal dining, according to the National Association of Home Builders. That's down from 47 percent of the new houses in 1985.

Kitchens account for about 13 percent of the total area of a 2,300-square-foot house, the average size of the U.S. house built in 2001.

Meanwhile, "the line between the kitchen, family room and the breakfast room is becoming very fuzzy," said Stephen Moore, partner in charge of marketing for Bloodgood Sharp Buster, a Des Moines-based national architecture firm.

"We are beginning to see two kitchen islands," said Moore, of a trend in California and the Southwest. One island is used for food preparation, the second "for eating and social interaction."

The reason in-home eating places are proliferating is "because of the lifestyles we live now," said Bob Riccio, Chicago director of sales and marketing for Malvern, Pa.-based Realen Homes.

"Casual eating has become very popular," he said. "We recognize that people are eating in just about every part of the house and we try to accommodate that."

The combination of a kitchen with eating area and family room allows a time-starved parent to put together a meal, oversee children doing homework and keep an eye on the television news, all at the same time, according to Moore.

The variety of eating places also reflects American families going in many different directions.

"Parents may be eating one place in the house and teen-agers with guests may be eating downstairs in the basement or family room," noted Riccio. "On the nights when you find you are dining alone, sitting down at the kitchen or dining room table by yourself is a little depressing, so you might prefer to go to the family room and watch TV."

For decades, experts believed the rate of overweight Americans was static, about 25 percent, writes Greg Critser in "Fat Land, How Americans Become the Fattest People in the World" (Houghton Mifflin, $24). But since the 1980s, the percentage of overweight or obese people in the United States has zoomed to 65 percent, a rate so high that U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher in 2001 said it was at "epidemic" proportions.

Sharon Stangenes is a writer for the Chicago Tribune, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.